Create Your Wedding Photography Invoice for Finance Effortlessly

Wedding photography invoice for Finance

what's up so let's go ahead and talk about my booking process and keep in mind here I'm patreon we're gonna keep things very low-key like you're just hanging out with me and I'm chatting with you about these subjects so again leave me comments below on patreon with more information about what you all want to see and I will make videos about that stuff but let's go ahead and get into this booking process so to start out on my website I have a contact form which is connected to honey book and it has all the information that I'm gonna want from my couple one big thing to keep in mind is don't make this too long it doesn't need to be the longest form in the world where you know everything about them keep it nice and short because you want people to actually fill it out obviously put enough information in your form so that you'll weed out some of the people who just want to know your pricing or something of that sort but keep enough information in it so that you know that they're interested and they want to talk to you so they go ahead and go in they fill out my contact form on my site and I get that contact put directly into my honey book this is kind of what it looks like once I received the inquiry I try to get back to my couples as quickly as possible obviously some days I'm not able to do this like on a Saturday if I'm doing a wedding or on Sundays which I actually take off fully I don't do any work on Sundays but in general I'm getting back to my couples within 5 to 10 minutes maybe an hour to 5 hours at most you want to get back to them as quickly as possible don't forget there are other photographers out there trying to get that work as well and if you're the most responsive your couple already sees oh wow this person is really in there they really are responsive and I know that if I need help on my wedding day during the wedding after the wedding before the wedding that they're gonna be there and be responsive and have a whole bunch of communication so definitely make sure you're responding to your couples as quickly as possible obviously don't lose sleep over it don't neglect your family or your loved ones just to get the business but make sure you're getting to them quickly so after I respond to my couple I we'll have a link for them to sign up to have a meeting with me so even pre-pandemic I always tried to meet with my couples either on FaceTime or zoom I would also do in-person meetings but those were a little bit more rare but at the end of the day I really want to meet my couple and also vet them to make sure that we're good for each other seriously the biggest biggest biggest lesson I have ever learned during photography is do not be afraid to say no to a couple I let couples know that the reason we're meeting is to make sure that we gel correctly and that you like my photography style and that if you have any questions for me I can answer them and if they say anything during our meeting there's just a little bit off that might show that they don't like my style or they're looking for something that I don't particularly give to my couples then I will let them know that I'm not the photographer for them and then also give them some recommendation again this is a business at the end of the day so you need to make sure you can get to a place where it's not emotional anymore and you're just sitting there being like well I'm gonna make the money or who I don't want to know it's either yes or no and it's fine if you don't book your book somebody else but what you don't want is to book just for the money and to deal with the worst client in the world you don't want that so if it's not gonna work out don't say no like in a mean way but just let them know I don't believe I'm the photographer for you because of XYZ and this will be better for both of us and let me recommend some photographers who give you more of the experience that you're looking for because the biggest thing you don't want on your wedding day is to be stressed because you don't agree with your photographer or they're trying to take photos that you're not into just let them know for real like I'm trying to help you this is not me saying no because I don't want to work with you it's me saying no because you know it's not gonna be what you want so I set up my meeting and honey buck has this really cool scheduler so all I have to do is post a link in there and then my couple can go ahead click the link and set up a meeting I've been doing that recently and honestly it has been way better than how I used to do it in the past which was just through email I used to email them and be like who do you meet and then wait for them and then they finally go I can do Thursday and you go oh cool and then you forget to email them or something happens and it's it's the worst process so if you have honey book definitely use their scheduler if you don't have honey book make sure to check them out I have links all over the world with 50% off let me know if you have any questions I'll be happy to help you set it up or anything in that sort yet again when you're on the content team on patreon I'm here for you if you have questions please please hit me up with them I will help you out so during this reply email that I'm sending to my couple as well I'm also telling them a little bit about why I want to meet what we're gonna talk about and I also send them my pricing now keep in mind I don't know if sending the pricing up front like that is actually the best process and I'll be totally honest while I'm sharing information with you all about how I booked I think there are still some holes in the way that I booked my couples sending pricing upfront the downside to it is the fact that it makes it transactional and not about value keep in mind there's like mad photographers out here taking photos so just comparing it by price makes you the same as everyone else everybody's taking good photos now like there's really not that big of a difference between photographers and good photos especially from just a common person's view they don't see photos the same way we do so to them your photographer your work looks good how much do you cost and you just lose value when you're talking about value now you're talking more of like well what is this person doing for me how is their photography and their approach gonna make my wedding day better what is it that sets them apart from other photographers rather than it just being like how much do you cause but generally I have my introduction email I send them the pricing in there I have the link for them to sign up to meet with me and I send that off to them generally if the couple's interested and they're not turned away by my pricing sheet they'll go ahead and schedule a meeting with me and yet again like I said with the honey book scheduler that goes extremely quickly I actually just booked a meeting like the other day for a 2021 wedding and yet again I just send that first email they go ahead and make the schedule and then alike cool here's my number let's set up Zoomer we'll go from there now the next stage after that is to have the actual meeting and again I had a video in the past where I talked about some tips about your meetings y'all can check that out up above I'll link it for you all but basically you want to chat with your couple you want to get to know them you want to talk about everything besides the money I don't talk about money in my meetings yet again I want this to be more about value not about how much do you cost I go over any questions they have I talked about how payments happen yet again still not talking about money I'll talk about the contract I'll talk about all that stuff and after the meeting I go ahead and send them a proposal so the proposal is the whole thing laid out is their contract is how much it cost if there's any discounts when they're gonna be paying all of it laid out for them so they can make the decision thin and there I'm able to easily send this through honey book I have pre-made proposals already set up so I really just have to go in maybe change some pricing customize it for them and send it off and pretty much I'm sending that the same night because I want them to see it immediately and have their first reactions to it and have them feel good or bad and then this is where the harder part comes with booking your couple you don't want to run up on them all the time you know after you've waited a day or two asking them hey have you looked at the proposal hey are you booking you want to let them sit with it let them look at it and see how they feel about it and then after maybe three or four days get back in touch with them and ask them if they have any more questions about the proposal generally at this point couples will tell me either that they're not interested they went with someone else or they'll ask me a couple more questions about the proposal and what kind of dialogue from there and then at that point they book they pay their booking fee and they go on from there once I've booked my couple I go ahead and set a workflow that I've set up inside of honey book on their project so that there's a lot of automated emails that will go out and remind me the type of things I need to remember for their wedding day that will be in another video but yet again a honey book is a great tool for running your business if you've not heard me talk about it before you're gonna hear it a lot because it is amazing so that's a quick look at my booking process if you all have any questions about it please let me know and like I said again I'm happy to talk through any parts of it with you all or even look at your booking process and seeing where we can punch some holes or not punch them fill some holes up so that you don't have any issues and you're able to book more thank you again for being a patron and I hope this information helps you out alright [Music] [Music]